The present invention relates to systems for analyzing and managing information and, more particularly to a method and apparatus for interactively retrieving, visualizing and navigating through textual information extracted from multiple documents by a search engine.
We live in the information age. How prophetic the statement of a major computer manufacturer which said "It was supposed to be the atomic age, instead it has turned out to be the information age." Prophetic both in the impact of the age, as well as its potential for beneficial and deleterious effects on humankind. Faced with an explosion of information fueled by the burgeoning technologies of networking, inter-networking, computing and the trends of globalization and decentralization of power, today's business manager, technical professional and investment manager are faced with the need for careful, accurate and timely analysis of the deluge of information underlying their everyday decisions.
Several factors underlie this need for prompt information analysis. First, in an era of ever tighter cost controls and budgetary constraints, companies are faced with a need to increase their operational efficiency. In doing so, they face the need to assimilate large amounts of news, memos and other information, both concerning their internal functioning as well as their position in the marketplace. Second, the omnipresent factor of litigation which may cost or earn a company billions of dollars. The outcome of such contests is often determined by which side has access to the most accurate information. Third, the drive for greater economies of scale and cost efficiencies spurs mergers and acquisitions, especially in high technology areas. The success of such activity is highly dependent upon who has superior abilities to assimilate information. Fourth, the explosive growth of technology in all areas, especially in biotechnology, computing and finance, brings with it the need to access and comprehend technical trends impacting the individual firm. Fifth, the globalization of the market place in which today's business entities find themselves brings with it the need to master information concerning a multiplicity of market mechanisms in a multiplicity of native languages and legal systems. Sixth, the decentralization of large industrial giants has led to the need for greater cross-licensing of indigenous technologies. This requires that companies discern precisely the quantity and kinds of technology being cross-licensed.
Faced with the increasing importance of successful analysis of a burgeoning information stockpile, today's business professional is faced, as never before, with a need for tools which not only find information, but find the correct information, as well as, assist the user in drawing conclusions and perceiving the meaning behind the information resources discovered.
The most typical information analysis tool available today is a database of text or images which is searched by a rudimentary search engine. The user enters a search query consisting of specific key words encoded in a boolean formalism. Often the notation is so complex that trained librarians are needed to ensure that the formula is correct. The results of database searches are a list of documents containing the key words the user has requested. The user often does not know the closeness of the match until each reference cited by the search engine is studied manually. There is often no way to search different portions of documents. Finally, the output of this process is a flat amalgam of documents which has not been analyzed or understood by the system performing the search.
The user who turns to an automated information analysis system is seeking not merely a collection of related documents, but the answers to critical questions. For example,
"Of the court cases decided in California last year, how many of them involved a sexual harassment charge?"
"What companies exist as potential competitors in the market place for our planned product?"
Current analysis tools demonstrate themselves to be ineffective when faced with these types of issues. This issue was addressed in the above commonly owned, copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/929,603, David L. Snyder and Randall J. Calistri-Yeh, entitled, "Management and Analysis of Document Information Text", (attorney docket no. 17965-000110), filed Sep. 15, 1997, which described an advanced search technique for graphing information in a set of documents. However, an environment for interactively visualizing relationships among the information in documents by selectively filtering and graphically displaying data of the present invention are heretofore not known in the art.
For the foregoing reasons, what is needed is an information analysis tool capable of parsing information from a large set of documents into manageable information units and presenting these information units to users in an intelligible way.